Chapter 459: The Price of Seeing

It goes without saying.

Harm does not disappear; it only transfers.

There is no such thing as a free lunch under heaven; if there is, it simply means someone else paid the price for you.

Luo Ji squeezed his eyes shut tight, his eyelids like hinges nailed shut by a stapler, not daring to reveal even a sliver.

Yet strangely, even though he no longer gazed at the mirror surface, some connection transcending the physical level still eroded his body and soul like a stubborn disease.

First came the sensation of drowning, as if pressed into the deep sea, every breath feeling as though his lungs would burst.

Then came a terrifying itch from deep within his marrow, as if countless insects were gnawing at his bone cavities.

His shoulder blades and spine spasmed uncontrollably, as if they would pierce through his flesh and burst out of his body in the next second.

Afterward, his consciousness suddenly plunged into a thick darkness, all five senses completely stripped away.

In this darkness, there was nothing, only eternal silence.

Then he felt his soul being drawn out of his body, sucked into a spinning vortex.

As if falling into a strange reincarnation.

Sometimes he was a mutated monster curled up in radioactive ruins, its rotting claws tearing at its own entrails;

sometimes he was an ignorant child sitting in a wheat field, looking up at an unidentified flying object streaking across the sky;

countless contradictory memories stirred his brain like blades, nearly splitting his mind, leaving him unable to remember who he was or where he came from.

After finally escaping the reincarnation, he felt the fluid in his blood vessels suddenly boil, as if being stir-fried over a fierce fire.

Then he felt himself placed upon a huge table, a faceless mouth biting toward him.

Terrific biting sounds exploded beside his ear, and he clearly felt his bones being "cracked" apart.

"Am I... going to be eaten?!"

Luo Ji struggled on the verge of collapse, but could not even let out a scream.

He dared not open his eyes, nor even think—almost dead without looking at the mirror, if he truly glimpsed the scene within, wouldn't he turn into a puddle of bloody flesh on the spot?

Luo Ji instinctively concluded that all the harm he was now suffering came from the mirror.

The mirror had seen horrors it should not have seen, and as the mirror's host, he merely passively shared part of the harm of "observation."

Whether it was the quantum entanglement effect on a scientific level or an artifact contract in the realm of metaphysics, both were quite logical.

His judgment was basically correct.

In fact, given that he had closed his eyes wholeheartedly, he only bore 10% of the indirect harm, while the mirror bore 90% of the primary harm.

But the problem was, he had closed his eyes, yet he couldn't stop someone from staring hard beside him.

So, the harm from Zhang Liyou's peeking was also calculated in.

As for why this harm was counted against the mirror and Luo Ji, the causal intricacies behind it ran deep.

But, simply put, using reality as a popular analogy:

Suppose you used a camera to film a rather primitive "learning" video and spread it, and then someone saw it.

Then legally, you are the one who produced and spread bad content.

You are the perpetrator who should be arrested, and the camera is the tool of the crime to be confiscated.

And those who accidentally watched this video—what guilt could they have?

Even if they did, their guilt would be counted against you, meaning the judge would increase your sentence based on the quantity you spread.

Of course, those who watched your video were not entirely unharmed; their pure souls suffered irreparable permanent pollution caused by that video.

Crack—crack—

In Luo Ji's ears came the continuous phantom sound of himself seemingly being gnawed on.

Time twisted in fear.

Perhaps a century had passed, or perhaps only a second.

Luo Ji suddenly felt the bone-eroding pain recede like a tide.

His consciousness regained clarity from the chaos, only to realize—that "crack" was not a phantom sound, but

He tremblingly opened his eyelids, his neck stiff as a rusted machine, lowering his head inch by inch.

He saw the surface of the Bronze Ancient Mirror covered in spiderweb-like cracks, large shards silently falling into the turbid stagnant water on the ground, splashing dark water droplets.

The sole remaining half of the mirror lens hung precariously in the frame, covered in fine cracks, as if any larger movement would make it jump into the river to die for love as well.

What made him most despondent was the mirror surface itself—that once clear surface was now covered with a layer of ghastly white turbidity, like a blind man's cloudy eyeball, unable to reflect any scene anymore.

"Luo Ji, what are you doing with a broken mirror? And it suddenly shattered?"

Zhang Liyou half-squatted beside him, deliberately avoiding Luo Ji's grief-stricken face, lowering her head to focus on groping in the sewage, carefully picking up irregular shards.

And from an angle Luo Ji could not see, two smaller mirror shards quietly slid into her cuff.

The edges of the shards drew small blood marks on her arm under her sleeve, but she seemed not to notice, merely handing the picked-up shards to Luo Ji.

"The mirror is shattered like this, do you still want it? Why not throw it away?"

Zhang Liyou's words had not yet fallen when she suddenly fell silent.

Her pupils suddenly contracted, she stared fixedly at Luo Ji's face, lowering her voice to exclaim: "Wait—your eyes...?"

Luo Ji subconsciously took the mirror shard she handed over, hoarsely squeezing out a "thank" word.

But just as this word left his mouth, his heart trembled: "Eyes, my eyes how...?"

Boom—!!

A deafening roar suddenly exploded, cutting off the words on the verge of his lips.

The entire Underground Pipe trembled violently, the rusted metal Pipe Walls emitting tooth-aching groans.

Turbid sewage splashed in the shaking, the mirror in Luo Ji's hand emitting near-collapse "crack crack" sounds, those spiderweb-like cracks seeming about to fall apart completely, not wanting to "live" for even a second.

Luo Ji didn't even have time to stuff the mirror back into his pocket; he no longer cared about anything, his palm also trembling.

The skin and flesh of the palm suddenly split vertically, like a mouth without teeth, revealing the crimson flesh within.

Zhang Liyou widened her eyes, staring fixedly at this scene, yet her heart was strangely calm.

Having witnessed those horrors beyond comprehension in the Mirror Gallery, this child's play "anomaly" could no longer stir any waves in her heart.

It was Cui Cui who was so shocked her jaw nearly dislocated, her eyeballs bulging so much they almost fell out, a thought exploding in her mind like a thunderclap:

"This so-called 【Avengers】 of ours... Luo Ji himself is a monster?!"

Under the two's unblinking gazes, that half-piece of broken mirror was slowly swallowed by the "mouth" in Luo Ji's palm.

Flesh wriggled, wrapping around the mirror shard, emitting a hair-raising sticky sound, finally closing completely, leaving only a faint scar on the palm.

Before there was time for doubt or explanation, the wind rolled up by the explosion, like heavy door panels, slapped squarely into the three of them, blowing them away...

(End of Chapter)